Posted on

REVIEW: A Splinter Of Ice, The Original Theatre Company, York Theatre Royal

Withholding the truth: Oliver Ford Davies’s Graham Greene and Stephen Boxer’s Kim Philby in A Splinter Of Ice

A Splinter Of Ice, The Original Theatre Company, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

WHAT’S this? A proper printed programme to peruse. Another sign of a return to theatre’s old normal ahead of Monday’s Step 4 pronouncement and its promise of the resumption of full-capacity shows.

What’s this? A not particularly busy first-night audience for spy story A Splinter Of Ice, even making allowances for social distancing in masked times. We could romanticise how theatres will be crammed to the gills once “Freedom Day” arises, but audiences are selective. Always were, always will be.

In between the mothballed lulls in lockdown, we have grown accustomed to seeing theatres and theatre companies adapting to Covid rules with social-bubble casts of one, two or three on main stages. In truth, Ben Brown’s three-hander would have been equally at home on a studio or Edinburgh Fringe stage, where it would have gained from added claustrophobia.

A Splinter Of Ice has its own cases of social distancing and mask-wearing: Brown’s subject matter is the first meeting in 35 years of The Third Man writer Graham Greene (Oliver Ford Davies) and Cold War-era spy Kim Philby (Stephen Boxer) in 35 years, whose friendship had been forged in Greene’s days in Philby’s office at MI6. Greene professed to loving him, maybe explaining the play’s inclusion in the Theatre Royal’s Love Season. 

British intelligence officer and double agent Philby’s defection to the Soviet Union ensured an enforced social distancing, despite Philby’s invitations to his old friend to visit him. Greene finally does so when attending a peace conference at Gorbachev’s initiation, along with the likes of Yoko Ono, Gregory Peck and Peter Ustinov.

The date is February 15 1987. Greene arrives for dinner at Philby’ rudimentary Moscow flat, home to the terminally ill spy, his charming fourth wife Rufa (Karen Ascoe) and books and a chair given to Philby by fellow Cambridge Five spy Guy Burgess.  

Michael Pavelka’s set is skeletal, bare scaffolding framing the drab flat contents, much like Brown must fill in the blank pages of exactly what went on that night as Greene would later only affirm that the meeting had taken place.

Likewise, Boxer’s Philby opens by saying he will not answer any of Greene’s questions, although subsequently he does, but who knows where the truth lies in his answers. Greene had had the first word, addressing the audience directly to warn that “perhaps he was just playing with me, as he did with others”. Philby’s mask-wearing had been so adroit that he was, in Greene’s words, “the greatest spy of the 20th century”.

The ghost in the writer: Oliver Ford Davies’s Graham Greene, there but not there

“Though they are great friends, they withhold things; they’re not always honest with each other,” Ford Davies forewarned in his interview, and indeed Greene is, in his own way, as a writer, an outsider, an observer, who has to keep his anti-social distance from his quarries. Are his reasons for finally agreeing to see Philby entirely honest, or is there a hidden agenda?

Just as Philby is still in the service of his Russian masters, albeit only sparingly, so Greene still attaches himself to “the firm” (MI6).

The British love a spy story, whether in book or film form, and here we have two of the brightest minds of their generation locking intellectual horns over wine, whisky and a dinner of coq au vin cooked by Rufa (although Philby normally does the cooking).

Tonight, however, he is on washing-up duty, a task that facilitates Brown the opportunity to have a conversation between Greene and Rufa, to bring a third, more sympathetic, perspective into the reunion, a device that also loosens up what might otherwise be all rather too stifling and monochrome.

Brown conducts the first half as Philby sketching in some of the blanks under Greene’s questioning, telling the story his convivial, urbane way, before all that politesse truly turns to politics post-dinner when Greene’s probing becomes more of an inquisition, as Philby starts to show his true colours in “vodka veritas” with what Greene calls his “chilling certainty” – and no sense of guilt. Greene turns out to be the more mysterious character, the ghost in the writer, there but not there.

There is a little brittle wit , there is intrigue, history and mystery too, and then there is the big question: would you choose to be loyal to your friend or your country? Yet A Splinter Of Ice ultimately leaves you as cold as the Cold War; for all the surface finesse of Alan Strachan’s direction and the consummate stage craft of Ford Davies, Boxer and Ascoe, it should reveal and say more, rather than play a chess game in words. From Brown, amid the display of superior grey matter, the play is too grey without enough of his own voice beyond the detailed research.

Truth be told, An Englishman Abroad, Alan Bennett’s marrow story of a defector and British visitor, Guy Burgess and actress Coral Browne, meeting in Moscow in 1958, was more fascinating, more rewarding too.

Given the subject of two men who took such risks, whether in word or deed, A Splinter Of Ice feels just too safe.

Review by Charles Hutchinson

Posted on

‘Though they are great friends, they’re not always honest with each other,’ says Oliver Ford Davies of writer Greene and spy Philby in A Splinter Of Ice at York Theatre Royal

Oliver Ford Davies as Graham Greene in The Original Theatre Company’s touring production of A Splinter Of Ice

MOSCOW. 1987. As the Cold War begins to thaw, novelist Graham Greene travels into the heart of the Soviet Union to meet with his old MI6 boss, Kim Philby, after declining his offer for more than 30 years.

So begins Ben Brown’s new political drama, A Splinter Of Ice, presented by The Original Theatre Company, under the direction of Alan Strachan, on tour at York Theatre Royal from July 6 to 10 as part of The Love Season.

Brown explores an unlikely friendship, one interwoven with deceit and loyalty between writer and spy, who  set about catching up on old times under the watchful eye of Russian memoirist and Philby’s last wife, Rufa (played by Karen Ascoe).

Amid a new world order breaking out around them, how much did the writer of The Third Man know about Philby’s secret life as a spy – the most successful Soviet double agent in Cold War times – and did Philby betray his friend as well as his country?

Oliver Ford Davies, last seen on a York stage in Goodnight Mister Tom at the Grand Opera House in February 2013, will play Greene opposite Stephen Boxer as Philby, returning to the Theatre Royal after appearing there in The Remains Of The Day in March 2019.

“The play takes place when they hadn’t met for 35 years, when Graham Greene was invited as part of a peace conference that Gorbachev initiated, attending with likes of Yoko Ono, Peter Ustinov, Gregory Peck, Norman Mailer and Shirley MacLaine,” says Oliver.

“Greene tops and tails the play, starting by talking to the audience, then getting the story from ‘the greatest spy of the 20th century’. That’s the first half, with the second half being much more confrontational, as Greene challenges Philby about what he did in training men before sending them to their deaths, whereas Philby says ‘it’s a war and you send men to their deaths in war’.”

Greene was very fond of Philby, working with him at St Albans for three years during the Second World War, recalls Oliver. “But what also emerges is that though they are great friends, they withhold things; they’re not always honest with each other,” he says.

Oliver Ford Davies as Mister Tom in Goodnight Mister Tom at the Grand Opera House, York in 2013

“Philby is economical with the truth, and right at the beginning of the play, Greene says, ‘perhaps he was just playing with me, as he did with others’. 

“He was a master of deception and lying when he was interrogated in 1951 about being the ‘Third Man’, surviving undetected for another 12 years, until a chance comment nailed him as Russian mole, and when that revelation came, it came from a most unlikely source. The way he was so good at deceiving people was quite remarkable.”

Brown’s play gives Philby a constant slight smile. “It’s difficult to know what the smile said: was it boredom with the question being asked?  But it could also be covering up his inner demons, in an act of subterfuge,” says Oliver.

“Greene and Philby are two highly intelligent, highly perceptive men. Greene was extraordinarily perceptive about the human condition in his writing.”

Brown’s storyline is rooted in fact, but its dialogue is “entirely fictitious”. “They did meet a few times in 1987 during the peace conference, and they definitely spent an evening having dinner at Philby’s flat, but Greene said, ‘that’s all I’m going to say on that’, so instead the play’s account is entirely fictitious speculation,” says Oliver.

Should you be pondering the significance of the title, let Oliver explain. “Greene famously said, ‘there is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer’, as a novelist has to be unscrupulous if he is any good, he contended, because all of your friends and relations will come into your work, even though you may not like doing this…

“…’and there is an icicle in the heart of a spy’. That’s what he wrote inside the front cover of a book he gave to Philby.”

The writer and the spy: Oliver Ford Davies’s Graham Greene and Stephen Boxer’s Kim Philby in A Splinter Of Ice

In terms of drawing an audience, Oliver says: “We are aware that to people under 40, Kim Philby is probably not known and that Greene’s books are not that widely read, but people do know The Third Man film – and there’s a link there because Philby claims that when he saw the film on TV, it really troubled him because he thought Greene had sussed him out as the Third Man; he was the villainous Harry Lime.”

Oliver, whose research has taken in reading biographies and Greene short stories, describes the writer as a complicated figure but one who “makes a lot of English novelists look very parochial and Islington bound”.

“I was thinking about writers of spy stories the other day, how John le Carré admired Greene enormously, and how Greene said The Spy Who Came In From The Cold was greatest spy novel of them all,” he says. “Interestingly, Le Carré hated Philby and said MI6 should have annihilated him in Beirut.”

Putting Oliver on the spot over whether he would choose to show loyalty to friend or country, he answers: “Well, this comes up in the play, when Philby asks Greene, ‘what would you have done, if you had discovered I was a Russian mole within MI6?’.

“Greene answers, ‘I would have given you 24 hours…then I would have betrayed you. Out of one or the other, there are limits to how much I would betray my country.”

Oliver never did reveal his own preference!

The Original Theatre Company in A Splinter Of Ice, York Theatre Royal, July 6 to 10, 8pm; Thursday and Saturday matinees, 3pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

Copyright of The Press, York

Posted on

Remember Alan Bennett’s The Habit Of Art at York Theatre Royal? Now it’s online

Matthew Kelly as York-born poet W H Auden when Alan Bennett’s The Habit Of Art was rehearsed and staged at York Theatre Royal in August and September 2018. Picture: James Findlay

YORK Theatre Royal’s 2018 co-production of Alan Bennett’s The Habit Of Art has been made available to stream by OriginalTheatre Online.

Directed by Philip Franks, a second British tour was due to start this month with Matthew Kelly and David Yelland reprising their roles of poet W H Auden and composer Benjamin Britten.

However, both the tour and a trip to New York for the Brits Off Broadway have been scrapped after the Coronavirus pandemic lockdown.

In turn, this has prompted The Original Theatre Company, the Theatre Royal’s co-producers, to release the production online.

Matthew Kelly as W H Auden and David Yelland as Benjamin Britten in The Habit Of Art, now available to stream through Original Theatre Online

Leeds playwright Bennett’s The Habit Of Art imagines a 1972 meeting between friends and collaborators Auden and Britten – their first in 30 years – where they mull over life, art, sexuality and death.

What drew Matthew Kelly to playing York-born Auden? “He has a razor-sharp wit and we have a very similar outlook about work which is the habit of art. I am the same,” he says.

“I have to keep working – I’m nearly 70 [his birthday falls on May 9] – not  because I need the money, but because the theory comes into play that the longer you hang on, the longer you will hang on. Otherwise you fall off the perch.”

The Habit Of Art requires Kelly to play an actor playing an actor playing a real-life person. If this sounds confusing, “No, it actually clarifies things,” says Kelly, clarifying things.

Philip Franks, director of The Habit Of Art, who also directed Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre in The Tempest in York last summer

“It’s a very clever device because it means you can be funny about what you do, you can comment on it and you can explain stuff. You can come out of the play Caliban’s Day, which the actors are rehearsing, and then it’s a play about the fictional meeting of Auden and Britten. 

“What’s wonderful about Bennett’s play is, not only have you got the finest composer of our time and the finest poet of our time, but you also, in my opinion, have the greatest playwright of our time.” 

Kelly continues: “So, you’ve got all those words being sewn together by our greatest playwright, who’s kind, accessible, very erudite and talks about sex in a very earthy way.

“He also gives a voice to the unregarded, who don’t usually have a voice. Generally, the great people, the stars of our time, get the final word and the people who look after them, what are commonly called ‘the little people’, really don’t get any say at all. They are the forgotten heroes who nurtured these stars.”

“He’s terribly kind and encouraging, which I love,” says Matthew Kelly of The Habit Of Art playwright Alan Bennett

Former Stars In Their Eyes presenter Kelly completed a hattrick of Bennett roles with The Habit Of Art, having appeared as unconventional teacher Hector in The History Boys in 2013 and Czech author Franz Kafka in Kafka’s Dick, opposite his son Matthew Rixon, as a younger Kafka, at York Theatre Royal in March 2001.

“We were hoping Alan Bennett would come to York because he lives in Leeds and it’s only a hop and a skip away, but he didn’t come,” recalls Kelly.

“A couple of years later, I met him at Heathrow and he came up to me and apologised for not coming to the York production. He was terribly kind about it. “Years later, I did The History Boys in Sheffield, then Kafka’s Dick again in Bath. On both those shows he sent champagne and a Good Luck postcard.

“He always knows what’s going on and he’s terribly kind and encouraging, which I love. The great thing about Alan is he’s very supportive of all productions, although he doesn’t go and see them.”

Original Theatre Online is streaming a second touring production too: Ali Milles’s The Croft, starring Gwen Taylor and again directed by Franks. Both that show and The Habit Of Art can be streamed any time until June.

“We are thrilled to be able to share these brilliant shows digitally: our own theatre without walls,” says The Original Theatre Company director Alastair Whatley.

Alastair Whatley, artistic director of The Original Theatre Company, says: “We know how disappointing it has been to our audiences, cast, creatives and Original Theatre to have to close our shows. We are thrilled to be able to share these brilliant shows digitally: our own theatre without walls. 

“However, the Original Theatre Company operates with no Arts Council support and relies almost solely on the box-office takings. With our two productions of The Habit Of Art and The Croft both out on national tours, the immediate cancellations are financially devastating for us.

“But we are determined, wherever possible, to meet our financial commitments made to our actors, stage managers and suppliers, who are all dependent on us to survive the coming months.  

“Every penny we make through this online release will go to the people who helped make this show, who now find themselves in a hugely precarious financial position.”

Both plays are free to watch although The Original Theatre suggests a minimum donation of £2.50. 

For full streaming details, visit originaltheatreonline.com.